This pack's AI's fighting ability sucks

[ahenobarb]

Originally posted by Tamerlin
This thread is one of the most interesting one I have ever read. I decided to change the values of my Apolyton Pack strategies accordingly, I thus opened the text file but when I scrolled the whole text I saw GOALS were distributed all along the text.

Do I have to change all the values each time ATTACK, PILLAGE, DEFEND and SIEGE are concerned (I have noted some goals are set to 0) ?

If not, what are the lines that need to be changed ?

BurntHostage : (to be pronounced rolling the "r") the dreadful revenge of the undomitable french people will be your loss...

I changed the values for all of the strategies. However, the first time I did this, I changed all the strategies except default because I thought that only the Barbarians would use the default value. I didn't notice much change in the AI's behavior, but when I changed the default values there was a real difference.

I'm not certain when the other strategies are accessed, but I would change them anyway (no fear -- no fear ) just to make sure the AI keeps the pressure on.

[hexagonian]

Barbarians have their own set of strategies. Change them all except the STRATEGY_BARBARIAN or you will be losing A LOT of early cities to them.

I'm guessing that the AI mainly uses the STRATEGY_DEFAULT settings for the normal AI civs, based on what is being reported...

[Tamerlin]

Thanks for your help Ahenobarb and Hexagonian.

I don't know exactly what I will do when I triffle with the APOL_Startegies.txt but I'am about to do it anyway.

[Peter Triggs]

I didn't notice much change in the AI's behavior, but when I changed the default values there was a real difference.

Actually this shouldn't be happening. The AI's base strategic states are initialized according to personalities, e.g. Stalin has the Militarist attribute and gets initialized via STRATEGY_MILITARIST_DEFAULT. Also, if they're at war they should be using one of the war strategies.

[HuangShang]

will this be in the next mod updates?

[hexagonian]

Here are adjusted CRADLE Strategies and a reduced AI bonus for the AI, as per Turambar's request. This will change Cradle to 1.34b and requires 1.34a to be installed beforehand. If this comes back with favorable reports, I will make it standard.

Thanks for the feedback on this - keep it coming...

[BurntHostage]

sure...!
call it the BurntMod!

[Tamerlin]

Originally posted by hexagonian
Here are adjusted CRADLE Strategies...

Thanks Hexagonian, I will use your "Strategies" adjustments in my future SAP2 game I hope to start before the end of this week. If anybody here is interested I will post a short after action report (unfortunately I don't have Vel's verve).

[hexagonian]

You will have to manually change the settings in the SAP strategies. If you simply rename my file, the game will crash because there are different governments in Cradle.

As for the changes in Cradle, I made the SEIGE and ATTACK priorities at 800000 in the default STRATEGY and dropped Pillage down to 500000, plus I also went into all of the various STRATEGY_xxx and tweaked the numbers too. As pointed out earlier in the thread, the main thing is to have a clear differentiation between the numbers, so I think that the numbers are sufficiently weighted toward ATTACK and SEIGE. If not, then we bump them up more and drop pillage down further...

Peter, I always assumed the same, which raises the question - Why are those strategies in the file then????

BTW, I'm always assumed that HARRASS refers to the actions taken against unconventionals/diplomats/settlers by military units, but what is HARRASS_CITY???

[ahenobarb]

dp

[ahenobarb]

Originally posted by Peter Triggs


Actually this shouldn't be happening. The AI's base strategic states are initialized according to personalities, e.g. Stalin has the Militarist attribute and gets initialized via STRATEGY_MILITARIST_DEFAULT. Also, if they're at war they should be using one of the war strategies.

I would not change your thinking about how the strategies are used just yet. When I made the changes originally (several months ago), I had only one neighbor (one left, that this) on my border. He had a stack of units near my city pillaging its heart out. It didn't attack the city until I changed the values for the default strategy.

So, it was only an experiment with one civ and without the particulars of the situation it's hard to go back and assess what strategy it was using at the time (Default it would seem).

Perhaps it something someone would want to experiment with and report back?

Following up on Hex's comment, how is HARASS_CITY different from PILLAGE? Is HARASSment just non-pillaging interference with the city like attacks by Specials. Lawyer injunctions against one of your cities is real Harassment!

[Peter Triggs]

Re: 'Harass'

Here's what Azmel2 told WesW about this:

1)What is the difference between the Attack and Harass goals? Also between Harass City and Siege? They seem like the same thing to me.

Richard: Notice that the Attack and Siege goes have different force matching than the harass goals. Harass goals have lower priority and are used to throw units at an enemy to keep them on their toes until a large enough force to attack or seige has been created.

The Harass goals have the same targets but use the Harass force matching conditions which are lower than the Offensive force matching used by the Seige and Attack goals. This means that the AI should be attacking those targets (cities or armies) with weaker forces, i.e. even suicidally. I think the idea was to weaken the defenders (maybe kill a few of them or just lower their health) so that they could be finished off with another attack on the next turn. But I've very rarely seen this happen and haven't had much success with tweaking the data.

IMO, these goals could have been better named. In my mod I've changed them to

ATTACK_CITY_OFF = SEIGE
ATTACK_CITY_HAR = HARASS_CITY

ATTACK_UNIT_OFF = ATTACK
ATTACK_UNIT_HAR = HARASS

And if anyone is worried that they might have problems getting to sleep tonight, here's "How Does The AI Task It's Units", which I started to write last summer (it's .rtf, open with WordPad):

[Martin Gühmann]

I used some parts of Wes' strategies.txt and he gave for all the different strategies differnt PW settings. The result was sooner or later all the AIs used the PW tax of the STRATEGY_SIEGE. I only saw one AI that used the PW tax of STRATEGY_ATTACK.

By the way Peter you should submit your *.rtf file to the directory.

-Martin

[Immortal Wombat]

By the way Peter you should submit your *.rtf file to the directory

All 3 (or more, what do I know?) of them in fact.

[Peter Triggs]

3? There's the one above and the Diplomacy one, both of which I intend to clean up and submit when I get a Round Tuit. But I can't think of a third one.